Eat: Lemongrass Cafe

Photos:

Last Wedenesday marked the official opening of a new little lunch-only eatery on N. King Street. The Lemon Grass Cafe, though its name implies otherwise, it isn't so much a cafe as it is a community center that serves plate lunches. It's sort of an enigmatic concept to try and wrap your brain around because chances are you've never eaten at a place like this before, but it's basically a co-op of immigrants who take turns cooking their native food in a cafeteria-like setting in Chinatown.

The idea is that these people are learning the ropes of running a small business, but they're doing it together under the guidance of a non-profit organization — the Pacific Gateway Center — that was founded to help immigrants from Asia and the Pacific start small businesses here in the Islands. As a diner at Lemon Grass Cafe, you're essentially providing the business owners with practice subjects, and as such, I'm more than willing to patronize the place. Is it a slick-running restaurant helmed by culinary artists who can wow you with their inventiveness? No. It's a we're-all-in-this together club house that happens to have some really good homestyle food that you may not have tried before.

The menu changes daily, and rotates between Lao, Burmese, Singaporean and Indonesian cuisines. Today, it was Lao food, and on the menu was: lemon grass barbeque chicken, yellow curry fish, green papaya salad, tofu salad and white, brown ans sticky rice. The food ordering works like any point-and-pick place, and for $6 you can get any combination of the day's dishes. Servers fill Styrofoam luau plates with whatever items you choose, and drinks come from a cooler behind the service bar.

There's also a small market of hand-crafted items that are available for purchase.

See a photogallery of Lemon Grass Cafe.

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Lemon Grass Cafe
83 N. King St.
11 a.m.-2 p.m. daily
851-7010